Goodbye My Kampong

by Josephine Chia

In May, 26-year-old Abu returned from a family visit to Kuala Lumpur (KL) with devastating news.

  “Such trouble in Malaysia!” he said, his face ashen. “The Malaysian government had declared a state of emergency when riots began after the results of the General Election came out. There were clashes between Malays and Chinese. The Malays felt that the Chinese were holding too much power and wealth, whilst the Malays were in low-ranking jobs. The Chinese felt that United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) was over-asserting its Malay identity at their expense, and the Malays felt that the Chinese were becoming too dominant.”

  “So, what happened?” Karim asked.

  “They tried to slaughter each other, that’s what! Many were killed.”

  “We must not let this distrust between Chinese and Malays infiltrate our village,” Uncle Krishnan, our civil servant Indian neighbour said. “The government here treats all races equally. There is no Bumiputra status here for Malays, or other special privileges for different races. We are all equal.”

  But it was easier said than done. Rumours started spreading in our country about the ill-treatment of the Chinese in Malaysia by the Malays and Malaysian Armed Forces. Apparently 6,000 Chinese were made homeless and nearly 200 had been killed. It was insinuated that the Malays here were out to harm the Chinese. Tension grew in Singapore. Where we had once been one united nation, now the Chinese looked at the Malays with suspicion, and vice-versa. It was not healthy.

  Another rumour arose about some invincible Malay warriors coming from Batu Pahat to protect their weaker Malay counterparts in Singapore. Some Chinese went around whispering to others that Malays were slaughtering the Chinese, using their parangs and even changkols. The Chinese started gathering their own weapons, sharpening bamboo clothes hanging poles into wooden spears. People locked their doors. The police set up road blocks in Bras Basah Road and places where the potential for clashes might exist. It turned out that they weren’t Malay warriors, but some Chinese Triad gang coming to meet other Triad leaders to take revenge on the Malays. The Triad converged on Kampong Kedah near Seletar and attacked the residents of a Malay kampong with swords and spears. It was a bloody affair with some villagers maimed or killed. Angered, the Malay community, instigated by a secret society, then retaliated by setting fire to shops owned by the Chinese in Geylang. And so, chaos began in the country, terrible clashes, where each took revenge on the other, were fuelled by rumour mongers. No one was safe.

  There were Chinese Triad society members living in Lai Par in the far reaches of Kampong Potong Pasir, and they went around trying to stir up friction between our Malay and Chinese villagers. For a time, it was difficult for us to relate to our neighbours, and the different races kept avoiding each other. For the first time, I didn’t get to see Fatima on a daily basis and missed her. How people could pit us against each other! The government instituted a curfew to control people’s movements. Fortunately, it acted swiftly, purging the villages of the Triad Societies and hauling people into prison if they were deemed to be inciting one race against the other. The PA sent the likes of Mr Yap, Suhaimi and Ananda to every household, to explain that the fight was not between ordinary kampong folks but between secret societies and triad gangs. Every night, we had to shut our doors early and we cowered behind them when we heard running footsteps, as the gangsters ran past our houses to escape the police amongst the warren of lanes and lorongs.

  Despite the horrors we faced, there was an event in 1969 which lifted our spirits. It was the moon landing. The American astronauts, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin finally managed to land on the moon with Apollo 11 on 20 July, with the words, “The eagle has landed.”

  The telecast re-united us with our estranged neighbours as they crowded round in the homes of families who owned TV sets. Fatima and her family came into our house and I was so pleased to see her, and our eyes spoke volumes to each other. We were all laughing and talking, patting each other’s backs like the old days. We debated if the whole idea of reaching the moon was some kind of a hoax put out by the Americans so that America could claim that they had beaten the Russians. We discussed and argued, some were more vocal than others; the non-educated were disbelieving. Could man really land on the moon? How could the rocket have carried enough fuel to last a journey of millions of miles? Would the astronauts be able to get back? But we still sat wide-eyed, listening to the commentator as he explained the process of the epic journey. There was a moment of silence as tribute was paid to the 3 astronauts of Apollo 1, who were previously killed on 27 January 1967, when their command module had caught fire.

  If it was all kosher, then we knew that we were watching history in the making! We were beside ourselves with excitement and tension. The black and white image on TV crackled and was blurred, but we could see Neil Armstrong in his chunky space suit, taking his first step on the surface of the moon.

  “It’s one small step for man, but a giant leap for mankind,” he said, though not very audibly.

  Considering that the telecast was coming at such long distance from the moon, all of us who were watching felt delirious with joy to see him take that first, bouncy moon-step. We presumed he meant “one small step for a man…,” and later there was a controversy about whether he did use the article, though he said he did in subsequent media interviews. But it was just semantics and grammar. The point was, the Americans had landed on the moon, so the space race to be first on the moon was over. Apollo 11 had achieved what John F. Kennedy had proposed before Congress in 1961, “before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

  If there is truly an afterlife, I hoped that John F. Kennedy was also watching the event unfold.

  In December, Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his team had to deal with a national catastrophe. Kampong Potong Pasir had suffered a huge flood in 1954, and again in 1967. It looked as though we were due for another major flooding. This time, not just our village but the whole island as it had been raining heavily since October. It reached its height on 10 December when our Malay friends and neighbours were preparing to celebrate Hari Raya Puasa.

  The winds howled and the monsoonal rains battered everything in their paths. Moving curtains of rain made visibility poor. Crowns of raindrops spat and dug at our sandy lorongs, creating more potholes. Our farmers could not farm. Our fishermen could not fish. Those on the coast could not go out to sea, their sampans bobbing like small ineffectual corks on the rolling sea. The tall waves, unusual for these parts, thrashed the shore repeatedly, bringing down the swaying palm trees. Some of the kelongs, offshore fishing traps with spindly rows of bamboo poles around an attap hut, collapsed; the livelihood of the fishermen was lost. Coastal kampongs, with houses on stilts, were in real danger as the wind howled and battered the flimsy structures.

  Trades that were normally conducted along the pavements of banks and office buildings, like the barber stall, the Chinese Pavement Library, the letter writer, the fortune teller and hawkers, had to be given up as the vicious wind tugged at lean-tos and sheets of tarpaulin, sending them headlong into innocent bystanders. The pasar malams, night markets of stalls plying their wares outdoors in the evenings, were also cancelled. On the streets, traffic snarled, drivers hooting because they could not see ahead. Anything lightweight flew about, not just paper or cardboard. The force of the wind was so great that even buckets, stools, chickens, ducks and small dogs were lifted into the air. The flying debris smashed into legs and faces, wounding people. Waxed paper umbrellas mushroomed uselessly upwards, rain pouring down the heads and necks of the people who carried them. TV aerials on our roofs shifted, slanted and got bent. Electrical cables snapped, sparked and fizzed, threatening lives.

  “Take cover! Take cover!” voices warned in our kampong.

  Coconut palms swooshed violently, dislodging their coconuts. People scattered in sheer panic to avoid being thumped on the head. The falling coconuts shot through our attap roofs, opening big holes in the sheaves of att
ap. Some exploded like little bombs when they hit the ground, breaking apart and spilling out their water and scattering sharp shrapnel of kernel. Even worse, the durian trees were also chucking down their fruits. It took seven years for a durian tree to fruit and the durian was never plucked, as it had to reach its own ripeness to fall, for it to be at its delicious best. Called King of the Malayan fruits, the durian was named after its chunky thorns or duri in Malay, durian meaning lots of thorns. Their hard outer layer protected the soft and rich custardy fruits, lying in segments, inside. The durian had a very distinctive aroma, shared by no other fruit, and was either the boon or bane of people. There was no neutral reaction possible to its smell. You either loved it or hated it. Everyone hated them that season, when they came hurtling down dangerously, like ill-aimed lethal missiles.

  On top of that, our village river began to swell, a frightening sight to behold.

  “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” Karim shouted instructions to the villagers, as the men formed human chains to pass the heavy sandbags.

  Our men were assisting the soldiers, who were sent to fortify the banks against the river. The newly-recruited national servicemen were sent out to help, clad in fatigue raincoats. The government had sent lorry loads of sandbags to shore up the banks of our portion of the Kallang River, as the level of the water kept on rising. There was frenetic activity everywhere. Women and children at home were piling things on top of tables, and storing money, jewellery and birth certificates in biscuit tins. Shopkeepers were packing away their goods to higher shelves. Some people were building rafts from used tyres, with old coconuts as buoys. Others lashed rattan chairs for the old and infirm on their wooden rafts. Sandbags were hurriedly wedged outside our doorways.

  Still the water rose.

  It was the same scenario all over the country, and many low-lying areas were in imminent peril of flooding. The torrential rain refused to abate. Whampoa River, which joined Kallang River just a short distance away from Potong Pasir in the Kolam Ayer and Bendemeer districts, also became angry and swollen. At their confluence in Kampong Bahru, the two rivers met with ferocious impact, drowning the kampongs along their banks, shattering the attap houses like matchsticks. The government rushed to evacuate and rescue people, sending out rubber dinghies and sampans. Bukit Timah’s open canal looked like a flowing river of roiling white water. Drivers, blinded by the rain and unable to see the edges of the canal that were concealed by rising water, drove into it and were swept along like useless boats. The occupants wound down their windows and yelled out in panic for help. The waves on the coast swelled and crashed into houses on the beach. Lightning zipped across the darkening sky. Thunder clapped repeatedly, sounding like a herd of cattle in a stampede.

  In our village, Salleh the attap weaver braved the storm to climb up onto roofs to help repair some of the damage. But it was a hopeless task. He was buffeted by the wind and rain and could not secure himself safely enough to fasten the layers of attap. At one point, I saw him struggle, when he was holding a sheaf of attap and was nearly swept across the roof by the wind. Our wooden doors and window shutters, poorly crafted, banged repeatedly, frightening the dogs and cats enough to hide under tables and beds. Indoors, we ran hither and thither to find empty basins, pails and kerosene tins to put under the gaping holes of our roofs as the rain forced its way through. We were getting wet even indoors as we scrambled for sheets of tarpaulin to cover our beds, but the mattresses became drenched.

  Eventually, the Kallang River could not contain itself and broke its banks.

  If we had thought that the 1967 flood in our village was bad, this was going to be far worse. The sound was horrendous, deathly in its purpose, the gurgling waters immediately swallowing up the farms sprawled by the river’s edge. People ran out of their houses, trying to salvage their prized possessions, children or livestock. Houses fell, trunks of trees cracked. St Andrew’s School, affiliated to the Anglican Church, sitting on a slight hillock near Meyappa Chettiar Road, rang an alarm of warning insistently. Parents cried out to their children to climb up on to stools and tables. Some scrambled to their rooftops. Swirling, muddy water obscured the lorongs and roads, then rushed into houses, toppling and dislodging furniture, forcing it to float into the open—chairs, meat-safes, cupboards, people’s clothes and personal items. These became weapons of destruction to those in their path. People don’t just die from drowning in a flood but also from injury by bulky and dangerous flotsam, like parts of a rusty zinc sheet, or planks with nails. Chickens, ducks, pigs, goats and dogs attempted to swim with frenetic effort, but their struggle only made it worse, and they succumbed to the flood, turning belly-up. The fish in our overflowing fish ponds disappeared into the merging whirlpool. Our flimsy wooden jambans broke and the contents of the outhouses poured out, creating an awful stench, adding to that of the dead floating animals.

  “Kiu mia! Kiu mia! Tolong! Tolong!” urgent shouts of help were heard in Hokkien and Malay, barely above the sound of the rushing water.

  It was chaos. Every villager whose house was not badly affected rushed out to help the others, picking up babies, small children, old people and animals. It was heartbreaking to see farmers trying to rescue their livestock. Our resident goatherd, Sivalingam, hurriedly rapped his cane and herded his goats out to Upper Serangoon Road, trying to cross it to reach the sloping hills of the Bidadari Cemetery, where they might be safe. But the animals were so unnerved by the moving vehicles on the road that they would not stay in one tidy group. They bleated in fear and skittered all over the place, causing traffic to come to a halt and giving Sivalingam more anguish. As dry land morphed into swirling, murky, watery lakes, the government sent out rescue dinghies and boats to our village. The kampong generator spluttered and gave up its ghost, plunging us all into darkness. Rescuers had to navigate with torchlights and lanterns. The gloomy landscape was punctuated by beams and pools of light. Anything beyond those small areas of light was out of the range of help.

  “Ada orang tak? Ada orang tak? Anybody there?” the rescuers cried out.

  If they were lucky, they would be rewarded with a voice crying out in response, giving them directions to their whereabouts. People were plucked to safety from rooftops and trees.

  Fortunately, our family home in a terrace of five houses was on a slightly higher ground than the farms, so by the time the water reached us, it had lost its ferocity and meekly flowed into our homes carrying scum, debris and bloated animals with it. I even saw a massive Chinese wooden coffin float by. Hopefully it did not carry a corpse. Eventually, the wind began to die down and the rain also began to diminish.

  “We need clothes, towels, blankets and food for the victims,” Pak Osman went around telling all the householders, as we were sweeping out the water and cleaning our houses. “The principal of St Andrew’s, Mr Francis Thomas, and his wife the matron, are housing the victims in the school hall, and we need volunteers to sort out the groceries that people have donated, to prepare food, to change the victims’ wet clothes, et cetera…”

  Third Elder Brother was already out there helping. I had been looking after my younger sisters whilst Mak took care of Robert.

  “Mak, can I please go to the school and help?”

  “Yes, yes, go,” she said to me without hesitation. “I can manage now that the waters have stopped rising.”

  Fatima and I went to St Andrew’s school together. For once we were not feeling chatty. The school had a distinctive frescoed creamy wall that looked like a continuous wave of scallop design. Its huge hall was packed with people, soaking wet or bloody. All looked grim, several were vomiting foul floodwater. Many of them were shell-shocked at their loss of family and home, while others were weeping openly. The tall European man with the moustache, Mr Francis Thomas, was directing teachers and volunteers. His wife, a Singaporean Chinese matron, was busy tending to the wounded, who had been caught by falling branches and trees or spiked by rusty nails. Fatima and I helped people to get out of their wet clothes an
d gave them fresh clothes that had been donated. Everyone worked relentlessly to feed the victims and make them comfortable until daybreak came. None of us slept.

  Across our island, the government had set up relief centres to help the thousands of victims. Amazingly, though many were injured, there were only five recorded fatalities. The widespread flood was the worst in decades. The Meteorological Department announced that we had 12 inches of rain in a short time. Bukit Timah Road went under three feet of water. The Straits Times published the dramatic photos.

  “In all my years in this kampong,” Pak Osman said, “I don’t think I have experienced such a phenomenal flood. Hope I don’t see one like this again.”

  The aftermath was just as deadly. An eerie silence descended as the murky water stood in sullen stillness before it slowly dissipated. Mosquitoes and flies proliferated. The receding flood left a film of mud and debris. Animals and broken parts of houses, furniture and other items lay like wounded beasts, sprawled across the chaotic, muddy landscape. The most tragic was whenever a body was found, especially when it was that of a child, the mother would wail in high-pitched pain. There were pools of stagnant water everywhere, but our wells were polluted and the village communal pipe was damaged, so we had none to drink. The government’s response was swift. The PUB sent out water supply trucks and we queued patiently with our pails and buckets. Mosquitoes proliferated. Medical teams came out to inoculate us. Our village was quarantined. We could not leave until we were cleared of any infectious disease. For some weeks, the manufacturing factories and offices across the country experienced a slow down due to the absence of workers. This was the first nationwide disaster that affected the whole country. Prime Minister Lee promised that he was going to tackle the severe drainage problem in the country that had been exacerbated by the heavy monsoon rains. He promised us that there would not be such a bad flood ever again. We were relieved to hear his optimistic pledge though Ah Gu, our eternal village pessimist said, “Ya, ya. All politicians make promises.”